From the Apollon Groupie With Love

In less than an hour, I will be outside in the balmy 46°F (8°C) weather hoping that my hands don't freeze as I try to light a charcoal burner and say a few prayers to Apollon.

Apollon and I have a special relationship in the sense that, if he were a rock star, I would be considered one of the groupies who has never missed a concert and has only once or twice missed downloading a new album the second it appeared on a digital music store for the sole purpose of listening before the express-ordered CD arrived at the house the following morning. Not everyone wants a dedicated relationship like that, and it would detract from the chill prime time drama quality that the current English-speaking Hellenic Polytheist community has.

Some may consider that relationship with Apollon a bit unorthodox. Devoting oneself to a specific God or Goddess requires careful consideration to make sure other Gods are given appropriate cultus. For the unorthodox bits, I find a lot of support in looking beyond the Hellenic community to podcasts such as Speaking of Faith.

The episode called “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi” initially drew me in because the page has an amazing work of photoart. I had not heard of Rumi before, but he was an Islamic mystic and poet from the 13th century. Islamic poets like Rumi who express the divine so beautifully provide such a stark contrast with the exclusivist monotheism at the core of the Islamic tradition that it's a wonder the religions are the same.

In the program, Krista Tippett introduces concepts surrounding Rumi, saying that

Rumi imprinted that movement with a vividly sensual and poetic practice of spirituality that has been provocative and controversial across the ages. He crafted some of his most religious ideas in the form of erotically toned love poetry, which seems at once addressed to Allah or God and to an earthly beloved. Rumi inspired the practice of the whirling dervishes by spinning around a column as he recited his poems.

As a woman profoundly motivated by the experience of poetry and words—something that goes along with a devotion to Apollon—it makes sense to mingle erotic language with descriptions of the divine experience. Everyone can experience the bliss of knowing the Gods with the proper concentration and ritualistic trappings. We frame bliss in erotic language because it arouses similar feelings that sometimes confuse the body into physical desire.

I love reading spiritual love poetry. Good poets invoke those blissful states through physical and emotional sensations.

My poetry for Apollon sometimes aims at this, but I leave some of the more ecstatic pieces unposted/unpublished because I'm not sure of how they would be received. A poem about finding Apollon in literature for the first time is written as a night in his bedchamber. A poem exploring his role in plague becomes an examination of fever and exploitation.

Bliss isn't pretty. It sometimes doesn't take us where we want to go. Sometimes, we prepare for it and it doesn't show up at all.

Poetry can be a vehicle of bliss because it codes emotions and experience. It's one of Apollon's links to something that many may not consider rational—something that seems to fly in the face of what the God stands for.

However, Apollon also said that we must exercise moderation in all things. Maybe reason is one of them.

Image from stock.xchng.